Courseware & Resources

Whitepapers

The Quanser Platform for Control Systems Research Validation

Control is one of the most broadly applicable modern engineering methodologies. Researchers in virtually all of the engineering disciplines apply its techniques to realize ever more complex engineering systems. Nevertheless, from a very practical perspective, it is often challenging to develop an effective research regimen that includes an advanced theoretical and algorithm framework and real-world implementation. Quanser devices offer a highly efficient platform for bridging this theory-implementation gap, allowing to adopt a framework of hardware in the loop (HIL) implementation of the control system that integrates a physical system (the plant) with dynamics of sufficient realism for physically relevant testing, and a real-time computational and modeling framework that allows for rapid testing of algorithms and concepts. Using such a combination, researchers are able to readily validate their research concepts with a physical system. In this whitepaper, Michel Levis, Quanser Application Engineer, and Dr. Tom Lee, Chief Education Officer at Quanser, present an overview of theoretical and application research topics from various institutions that have deployed Quanser equipment to validate their research concepts.